Conventionally, in this type of wire harness, a group of electrical lines has been covered and protected by either a binding tape member or a slit corrugated tube, or both (e.g., see JP 2004-296336A).
FIGS. 5A to 5C are process diagrams showing a conventional general method of protecting a group of electrical lines, in which the protection method is substantially equivalent, with respect to the wire harness disclosed in FIG. 5 of JP 2004-296336A. First, as shown in FIG. 5A, in a wire harness 10, an adhesive tape member 11 is cylindrically wrapped 2 or 3 times in the circumferential direction around a group of electrical lines 12 at two locations a predetermined distance apart from each other as auxiliary wrapping, and then an adhesive tape member 13 is roughly wrapped between the cylindrical windings so as to form a pre-wrapping. Subsequently, a slit corrugated tube 14 is placed over the group of electrical lines 12 as shown in FIG. 5B. Next, as shown in FIG. 5C, an adhesive tape member 15 is wrapped around the slit corrugated tube 14, wherein generally half the width of the adhesive tape member 15 overlaps itself, so as to form a post wrapping. Alternatively, it should be appreciated in the step shown in FIG. 5A, the pre-wrapping may be replaced with the post wrapping, and in the step shown in FIG. 5C, the post wrapping may be replaced with rough wrapping.
As described above, conventionally, a method of protecting a group of electrical lines using the slit corrugated tube 14 has been applied particularly in the case where a burr or edge is included along the wiring path for the wire harness.
FIG. 5 in JP 2004-296336A shows an example of related art.
However, in the method of protecting a group of electrical lines using the conventional slit corrugated tube 14 shown in FIGS. 5B and 5C, the slit corrugated tube 14 is placed over the group of electrical lines with the slit facing downward such that intruding water is drained to the outside through the slit in the corrugated tube 14, and therefore it has not been possible to avoid pre-wrapping the group of electrical lines 12 with the adhesive tape member 11 to prevent one or more of the lines in the group of electrical lines 12 from passing through the slit and hanging outside.
Also, in the method of protecting a group of electrical lines using the conventional wire harness 10, it is not possible to avoid performing post-wrapping by roughly wrapping or half-overlap wrapping the adhesive tape member 15 around the outer surface of the corrugated tube 14 to prevent the slit in the corrugated tube 14 from spreading, thus requiring the operation of pre-wrapping the group of electrical lines 12, the operation of attaching the corrugated tube 14, and the operation of post-wrapping the outer surface of the corrugated tube 14, which is time-consuming and costly.
Also, in the method of protecting a group of electrical lines using the conventional wire harness 10, it is necessary to prepare various sizes of corrugated tubes to match the diameter of the group of electrical lines in accordance with various trunk lines and branch lines of wire harnesses and various wire harnesses, and it is necessary to prepare in advance corrugated tubes that have been cut to various lengths in accordance with the length of the group of electrical lines that needs to be protected by the adhesive tape member.
Furthermore, in the method of protecting a group of electrical lines using the conventional wire harness 10, in the case of half-overlap wrapping that adhesive tape member 15 around the corrugated tube 14, intruding water is less likely to be drained to the outside, and in the case where the wire harness is supported to a vehicle panel in the vicinity of the engine or the like, vibration is transmitted from the vehicle panel to the corrugated tube and the group of electrical lines, and abnormal noise is generated due to interference between them. In particular, there has been the problem of high-volume abnormal noise being generated due to the corrugated tube being thick-walled and hard.
The present invention was achieved in order to solve issues such as those described above, and an object thereof is to provide a wire harness and a binding tape member that, by merely performing tape wrapping, have a protection function equivalent to a protection function for a group of electrical lines obtained by the conventional combination of a slit corrugated tube and pre-wrapping and post-wrapping with a binding tape member, that do not require a corrugated tube or pre-wrapping and post-wrapping material and operations for attachment thereof, that enable water intruding into the wire harness to be favorably drained, and that can reduce the generation of abnormal noise.